Joy Williams - The Quick & the Dead

He had lost himself for a moment in the cinnamon-colored spots of his giraffe; there was true depth in those spots, they had in fact the potential of real sinkholes. He moved on to the elephant room. Here he’d gone to dramatic extremes, trying to do his best by the old girl who was his centerpiece and whom, he would admit to no one, he somewhat regretted having taken out. Matriarchs held the memory of the family, years and years of it in that small but heavily convoluted brain. The bulls were just all flesh and bluster; it was the succession of mothers and daughters who led the herd. The oldest cows knew time’s history. They remembered Africa, the breadth of it, and were the sources of imparted knowledge. Once the guns erased them, the ones who remained could know only less, always less. There was that much less of Africa. The young ones knew — what? Boundaries, quibbling, quotas. Each one needed three hundred pounds of food a day and sixty gallons of water. Sixty gallons every day in a drought-plagued land! They had the capacity to solve problems. What did they think, how did they reason? “I’ll cut back to forty, and perhaps I won’t be culled”? “I mustn’t get moody, or I’ll be considered a rogue”? The youngsters now knew almost nothing in their shrunken Africa. Couldn’t walk thirty miles without running into some piss-poor farmland from which they’d be excised like bugs. Agriculture — worst damn thing to ever happen to the human race. Hoeing and hoarding. Man lost a dimension. Lost all sympathy and sense of magic. Virgil, supposedly a sinless magician, referred to as such. Never cared for Virgil. Too rural, a farmer at heart. Plus a copycat. If Homer hadn’t gone before, it would’ve never occurred to Virgil to be Virgil. Then farming brought all those little mouths to feed into the picture. Little mouths that weren’t there before, not so many anyway, not construed as such.

He gazed at the great gone creature before him. Ears like sails, great trunk high. He’d had her redone three times, couldn’t get her exactly right. Felt he owed that to her. He’d taken out an encyclopedia here. Still, there had been dozens of other hunters panting at his back, snapping at his heels, who would’ve done the same, the night-night urologist for instance. There had been a lot of unpleasantness in the bush, but if you were there to kill, some unpleasantness was necessary. It had taken years to put this all together, dozens of safaris. There were some trumpeting bulls and pretty youngsters, one positioned as though walking beneath its mother’s belly as was the young ones’ preference as long as they were able. It was an exceedingly remarkable setup. He didn’t like people coming in here, actually, and often closed it off. The space was navelike, topped with a clerestory, a doxological space. There was a sound as though of the most beautiful music in here, but there wasn’t any music; Stumpp had been told it was merely the proximity of the main air-conditioning system. Music an inadequate word in this case. Susurrus of celestial murmurings. How could such a sound be artificial? Many aspects to everything. World a mad orchestra.

Stumpp stood, half a century old, self-made. Had built himself from the ground up. Little Stumppie. Parents loving and good, tentative in all matters. Salt of the earth. Liked warmth and applesauce. Feared water in the cellar and tanks of oxygen on wheels. Dear ones, but never tutelaries. Not as many tutelaries in this world as should be. Nor tutors. The age distrusted instruction. Distrusted instinct. Instinct all atrophied. Adrift in the dark, no better off than a motherless calf. All souls lonely, but what did it matter? Couldn’t matter less that all souls were lonely. Was in a soul’s nature never to be satisfied until infusion was achieved with all. Price was obliteration, which was unacceptable. Though only on one level; on another level, perfectly okay. The stillness to which all returns, this is reality, objective reality being nothing. No wonder everything so nonsensical. In any case, all speculation and preparation was futile. But resistance was not. Push against those blocked doors, push, push, push. Had suffered share of pain. Broken back once, broken arm, leg, jaw. Scarred and stitched all over. Old war elephant who had never once been surprised by joy.

The air-conditioning continued to murmur away like God’s own brook, unaware that it was a mere appliance, albeit a half-a-million-dollar one. Stumpp couldn’t look at his elephants anymore. He didn’t know why he came in here so much. Was coming in more and more. It hadn’t been that long ago that there was meaning for him here, and now it meant less every time. Couldn’t be good. He dimmed the lights and locked up, then followed the yellow footprints down the hall to the Wildebeest Lounge. Yellow footprints went to the lounge, blue to the exit, white to the water closet, green to the gift shop, red to the petting menagerie. Ridiculous idea though it had been his own, Stumpp being directionally challenged. No inner logic to the color code, no basis in anything. Still, of no import. Hadn’t they gotten all the colors mixed up in some early translation of the Tibetan Book of the Dead? Now, there was a blunder. Someone working away on day seven after death or whatever day it was, working at following the red light and red wasn’t the right light at all, took them straight to Hell.

Stumpp made another martini in the lounge, then went into the cafeteria and popped a bagel in the toaster oven. Onion, his least favorite. Only onion left. Old people had taken all the sugar packets again, kiddies had lightly unscrewed the tops of all the condiments. He ate his supper hurriedly, keeping all further thoughts at bay, rinsed his glass and plate, set all alarms, and walked out through the blueblack night to his blueblack limousine.

We went sailing today. It was a lovely day, you would’ve enjoyed it.

A good brisk sail with a following sea.”

“Darling?” Carter said.

“Yes?”

“That’s impossible.” He was going to stress this from now on in his dealings with Ginger.

She crossed one tanned leg over the other. “It was”—she paused—“a ketch. It was not a yawl. Won’t ever mix those two up again. I remember asking you and asking you in the past and you never made the distinction clear. She was all polished and bright, and she had a lovely name. Her name was Revelance .”

“Darling?” Carter said.

“Yes?”

“Don’t you mean Relevance? ”

“No, I do not mean Relevance , I mean Revelance .”

“But she couldn’t be named Revelance , darling. That would be a mistake. Now, it may very well be a mistake and your recollection quite accurate. The person who painted the name on the stern just got himself too close to the work. The fellow’s laboring over one big letter at a time with the utmost care, and he loses, well, not perspective, but the sense of order, and an error is born. I’m trying to put myself in the poor man’s shoes, darling.”

“What are you talking about?” Ginger said with disgust. “You’re not making any sense. You have no grasp of the situation at all. My best friend here is Cherity, are you going to dispute her name as well? You can’t even picture this vessel, can you?”

“You said it was a ketch,” Carter said dispiritedly. Scarcely out of the gate, and he’d faltered in his reserve.

“Try to picture the vessel with me, Carter.”

“No,” Carter said.

“Try to picture us all on board.”

“No, no,” Carter said.

She smiled at him in a friendly fashion, which was not like Ginger at all. The cordiality emanating from her felt almost sticky. She held the smile steadily aloft.